


Nadia McConnell; a Girl With a Missing Half

by backiejonomo



Series: bare; character studies [3]
Category: bare: A Pop Opera - Hartmere/Intrabartolo
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-21
Updated: 2016-06-21
Packaged: 2018-07-16 09:22:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7262239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/backiejonomo/pseuds/backiejonomo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nadia has always wanted out of Jason's shadow, but this was not how she imagined it would happen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nadia McConnell; a Girl With a Missing Half

Nadia was born four minutes and twenty-seven seconds after Jason, and this marks the first time of many where she has come second to her brother. Their father wanted a boy. He wanted a strong young man who would be the pride and joy of the family. A young man to cherish as he grows up and eventually follows his father’s footsteps. Her parents had wanted a single child to spoil, a golden boy to be their pride and joy. They weren’t interested in having two children to take care of.

They blamed Nadia for this her entire life, as if she had a say in the matter. If she had a choice, she probably would have changed it too, because saying that she’s in Jason’s shadow would be an understatement. She wasn’t even close enough to be in his shadow. She was miles behind him, and has given up on catching up with him years ago. With his impeccable brains, his out of this world athletic talent, and his stunningly good looks, he was an impossibly hard act to follow.

She still loves her brother, of course. Who else would stand with her in the back of the room of family parties and talk shit? She could always count on his smirk that would accompany all of her whispered remarks about how ridiculously pretentious their father’s business partners were. He would always chime in with an obnoxiously high-pitched voice whenever she imitated a snooty businessman’s wife.

Neither of them could stand their parents and their parent’s world. But they favored Jason. He had a place in that world, while Nadia was left out in the cold.

Nadia felt resentment for Jason. It only ever happened in passing, but its strength and intensity was undeniable. She’d look at him, flocked by friends and chatting it up in the hallway, while she was alone at her own locker. She’d listen to everyone laugh at his jokes and listen to all the girls throw themselves at him. She’d listen to him win everything over and over. She’d listen to all the praise that was tossed his way. He was everything that Nadia wasn’t, and all the things she wished she could be.

It was the resentment that caused the drift between them; the resentment that was growing stronger and stronger as their father pushed him down the path to excellence, while Nadia was barely even spoken to at home. She couldn’t help herself to just crave the attention Jason gets, and has been getting since they were born.

After it happens, Nadia finds herself up all night, tossing a single question back and forth in her mind: Did the drift between them kill him? If she hadn’t been so damn jealous of him, would he have come to her? Would he have told her all the problems that had been piling up amidst their senior year?

It hurt her heart to realize that the time she knew her brother the most was after he killed himself, when all the secrets that had been crushing his bones had exploded and took him along with it.

Looking back at everything, Nadia knows that she hadn’t suspected a thing. She never thought twice about any of the lingering touches, the eye contact between the two boys that lasted a while too long, and the soft smiles when they thought nobody was looking. She hadn’t even considered it. He was the cookie cutter for the perfect child. The word ‘gay’ didn’t fit in the list of his desirable qualities. Her brother was too perfect.

_Perfect._

The word had always tasted poisonous on her tongue. Did Jason feel the same way? Did that word bother him just as much as it bothered Nadia?

She supposes that it must have, considering the word and all it entailed had killed him. It tasted so poisonous to him that he resorted to a vial of GHB, which quite literally did taste poisonous to the boy.

Nadia would have supported her brother, if she had known. She would’ve done anything she could to give him any feeling of safety or empathy that she could have provided. She would have held his hand and walked through the hellfire with him, and maybe it could’ve saved him.

She tells herself this every morning as she looks at the bags under her eyes in the mirror.

She tells herself this like a mantra, because it’s the closest thing she’ll ever get to closure. He wasn’t ‘too perfect’. Nadia hates herself for letting her parent’s view of Jason fester and infect her. He wasn’t ‘too perfect’ to be anything. She vowed that her parent’s impossibly high standards would never get in the way of her thinking ever again.

Because it was her parent’s standards that got in the way of Jason’s life.

He was gone because he thought he had nobody to turn to, and Nadia had only offered her shoulder to cry on when it was too late.

“Take my hand,” she had said after everything came crashing down around him. She sat behind him, arms wrapped around his waist, and squeezed him as tightly as she could. She didn’t know it, but she was making up for all the affection that the drift had washed away.

“We’ll get through this, I know you can” she said, and she desperately wanted to believe it. Did she know that it was too late? She tries not to think about it. She, instead, pleaded for him to call her.

_Why?_

_Because she feels guilty._

He was her twin brother, and she was supposed to be his other half. She was supposed to have some strong connection with him that only twins could possibly have. Instead, she felt like there was a ghost where her brother ought to be.

Every snide remark about how everything was too easy for him, every comment about how effortless his life was compared to her’s, every jealously charged glare… it all suddenly flushed into Nadia’s head.

She had been only adding to the pressure that eventually cracked Jason McConnell at the foundation.

Nadia thought back to every homophobic comment their parents had made, talking about how gay people were filthy, godless, and perverted. She couldn’t stop thinking about how every little thing that they said, every thoughtless comment, had become nails in Jason’s coffin.

And they had no idea what he was dealing with.

Maybe that’s why he tried so hard to fit into the old of perfection that their parents force fed to him. The internalized hatred inside him was forcing him to try and make up for being gay.

Nadia wants to throw up.

Their parents ( _well_ , she thinks bitterly, _I guess they’re just ‘my’ parents now_ ) grieve at the funeral.

Their mother openly weeps throughout the entire event. Their father gives a speech about how successful and talented his boy was.

But Nadia doesn’t hear a single word of it.

All she hears is her brother collapsing onto the floor, full of a drug that he swallowed with the purpose to give him a way out. All she sees is the numb face Jason would wear after being called into their father’s study, dotted with bruises that he would refuse to talk about.

Nadia, in the middle of the funeral, feels pure hatred for her parents. The parents that expected the world of their son. The parents that would have shunned him and quite possibly beaten the life out of their son, if they knew what he really was.

_But the person she would always rant to is being lowered six feet under the ground._

She has never felt more alone.

But loneliness was all Jason had felt for seventeen years.


End file.
